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A blog by Bill Hess

Running Dog Publications

P.O. Box 872383 Wasilla, Alaska 99687

 

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Wasilla

Wasilla is the place where I have lived for the past 29 years - sort of. The house in which my wife and I raised our family sits here, but I have made my rather odd career as a different sort of photojournalist by continually wandering off to other places to photograph people and gather information, which I have then put together in various publications that have served the Alaska Native Eskimo, Indian and Aleut communities.

Although I did not have a great of free time to devote to this rather strange community, named after a Tanaina Athabascan Indian chief who knew Wasilla in the way that I so impossibly long to, I have still documented it regularly over the past quarter-century plus. In the early days, my Wasilla photographs focused mostly upon my children and the events they participated in - baseball, football, figure skating, hockey, frog catching, fire cracker detonation, Fourth of July parade - that sort of thing. 

In 2002, I purchased my first digital camera and then, whenever I was home, I began to photograph Wasilla upon a daily basis, but not in a conventional way. These were grab shots - whatever caught my eye as I took my many long walks or drove through the town, shooting through the car window at people and scenes that appeared and disappeared before I could even focus and compose in the traditional photographic way.

Thus, the Wasilla portion of this blog will be devoted both to the images that I take as I wander about and those that I have taken in the past. Despite the odd, random, nature of the images, I believe they communicate something powerful about this town that I have never seen expressed anywhere else. 

Wasilla is a sprawling community that has been slapped down hodge-podge upon what was so recently wilderness of the most exquisite beauty. In its design, it is deliberately anti-zoned, anti-planned. In the building of Wasilla, the desire to make a buck has trumped aesthetics and all other considerations. This town, built in the midst of exquisite beauty, has largely become an unsightly, unattractive, mess of urban sprawl. Largely because of this, it often seems to me that Wasilla is a community with no sense of community, a town devoid of town soul.

Yet - Wasilla is my home and if I am lucky it will be until I grow old and die. Despite its horrific failings, it is still made of the stuff of any small city: people; moms and dads, grammas and grampas, teens, children, churches, bars, professionals, laborers, soldiers, missionaries, artists, athletes, geniuses, do-gooders, hoodlums, the wealthy, the homeless, the rational and logical, the slightly insane and the wholly insane - and, yes, as is now obvious to the whole world, politicians, too.

So perhaps, if one were to search hard enough, it might just be possible to find a sense of community here, and a town soul. So, using my skills as a photojournalist and a writer, I hope to do just that. If this place has a sense of community, I will find it. If there is a town soul to Wasilla, I will document it. I won't compete with the newspapers. Hell no! But as time and income allow, it will be fun to wander into the places where the folks described above gather, and then put what I find on this blog.

 

by 300...

Anywhere within a 300 mile radius of Wasilla. This encompasses perhaps the most wild, dramatic, gorgeous, beautiful section of land and sea to be found in any comparable space anywhere on Earth. I can never explore it all, but I will do the best that I can, and will here share what I find and experience with you.  

and then some...

Anywhere else in the world that I happen to get to, such as Point Lay, Alaska; Missoula, Montana; Serenki, Chukotka, Russia; or Bangalore, India. Perhaps even Lagos, Nigeria. I have both a desire and scheme to get me there. It is a long shot. We shall see if I succeed.

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Wednesday
Nov052008

New York: Subway series, final; Wasilla: I lose my glasses

DateWednesday, November 5, 2008 at 5:55PM

Young woman exits subway as I get on.

So many separate worlds, packed into so tiny of a space. (Remember, a click reveals a larger image.)

She seems to sleep on her feet. What kind of day did she have?

I did not expect to find such literal emptiness on the New York Subway. This was one of those times when I got on a train and went in the opposite direction from what I intended.

 

The persistence of smiles.

The way down into the subway.

Me outside, they inside. The opposite of what we who live Inside are used to.

This could be Fourth Avenue in Anchorage - if it were above ground and there was snow. I still worry that it could be me one day. What would this mean for my wife?

Divergent desires.

Red Line #1: The train I rode the most.

Perhaps she meditates.

I'll bet his neck is really warm.

The sports page.

Self-portrait: An Alaskan rides the New York Subway. Not all of us have, you know.

This will do it for the subway series. I have several other New York picture series that I shot and planned to put in here. I doubt that I will have time to do many more of them. I will try to get in at least a couple, but by then my pre-election trip to New York will be slipping so far into the past that I really ought to move on.

I should go to India.

 

Today in Wasilla: I lose my glasses 

I keep two pairs of reading glasses: one in my pocket in a little tube and another that is never supposed to leave my work station. Yesterday morning, I lost the pair in the little tube. In the evening, I lost the other pair. I tried to work at this computer anyway, but by late afternoon, I could not take it anymore. I got in the car and drove to Carr's, to buy another pair of glasses in a tube. Along the way I passed Teeland's, one of the original buildings of Wasilla.

When we moved here, Teelands sat right in the middle of the fabled wisdom of Wasilla's Main Street. Then it got moved to just over a block off Main Street. One morning, Margie and I decided to try breakfast here. We entered and found ourselves the only customers in the quite large, bottom-floor, restaurant. There were two waitresses. They stood behind the counter, visiting.

Five minutes later, they still stood behind the counter, visiting. I got up and called one over. She took our order, and filled our coffee cups. When the coffee cups went empty, I waited for a refill. None came, so I got up, went to the coffee pot and refilled them myself.

The breakfast was pretty good, though. And before we left, a lady came in and apologized. She said that had she been in the restaurant when we came in, the service would have been good. She charged us for only one breakfast. The other was free.

One of these days, we might go back and give them another chance.

Mostly, though, we go to Family, where the service is great and the food is, too.

Sometimes, we go to IHOP, which can be pretty good, too.


I discovered that Carr's no longer carries the glasses in the little tubes. And in the non-tube version, they only had women's glasses. So I went to the new Target for the first time and they had all the glasses that I needed. I bought four pair. 

I will probably lose them all in a short time.

I was very lazy today. These two pictures were the only images that I shot.

 

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